Seasons of Durham Life: December

In every cathedral and parish church, the year ends on a high note. Or rather, begins - for Advent marks the start of another liturgical cycle. 

Advent and Christmas see more people flock to places of worship than any other time of year. From late November a busy procession of services and events prepares the way for Christmas itself. Local organisations such as schools, Durham colleges, the University Christian Union, MenCap, Women's Institutes, the Hospice and others hold annual services. The Durham Christmas Fair partly takes place in the cloister bringing thousands through the Cathedral where many linger to sing carols. There is the Lighting of the Christmas Tree and the Blessing of the Crib. The Cathedral Friends and Cathedral Choir have big concerts. And to bring the season to its climax, there are two sittings of the Nine Lessons and Carols, Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and the major services on Christmas Day itself. 

We love seeing the Cathedral full of people day after day. It's what the place is for. I guess that for many of them, this is their only church service of the year, so we want to make it as beautiful and eloquent as we can. The good news about the coming of Light and Love into the world is too important not to make every effort to communicate it by all means possible. And if you are like me, you find that the magic of Christmas becomes more powerful and mysterious with each returning year. As I look back on 25 Christmases in three different cathedrals, where marvellous liturgy and music in magnificent surroundings have never failed to lift the heart and imagination in profoundly moving ways, I realise what a gift these wonderful places are. They are an inspiration not only to us who work and worship in them daily, but to our entire communities, our guests, public.

However, December does take its toll. The Cathedral staff, the volunteers, the building itself are on duty day after day. Services have to be prepared, printed, choreographed and rehearsed, largely back-room jobs unseen by most people but vital to every act of worship. Vergers have to move furniture around, put up staging, prepare robes, make sure that the ceremonial details are taken care of, solve problems on the day, generally see that everything passes off smoothly. Seating plans have to be devised and the volunteer duty stewards need to understand them before worshippers arrive. The church will be decorated near Christmas, and need daily cleaning and tidying. Organists and choir have music to practise, ministers have sermons and prayers to prepare. For large services there will be representatives of the media to brief, security operations to manage, first aiders to oversee, civic guests to receive. Even a simple service takes a lot of preparation; run several of them back-to-back on top of the daily services of matins, eucharist and evensong and you can see that it all takes a lot of careful planning. This is why we have each year's pattern of Advent and Christmas services carefully laid out a full 18 months in advance. We have learned the hard way that not to do this ends up by exhausting everyone. Not to mention the awful possibility that the wheels could come off....

'It's your busy time' people often say to us clergy at this time of year. I wish there were a better answer than feebly to agree that there is a lot to do. Advent ought to give us space to take the long view. This means reflecting on the ultimate things of human life itself, traditionally the season's themes of death, judgment, hell and heaven. And also on the meaning of the Incarnation itself: what Christmas is really for and why we make so much of it. There's a real tension between doing this through the Cathedral's solemn Advent worship while at the same time being ungrudgingly hospitable to everyone else's desire to anticipate Christmas early in the month. We can be singing 'O come O come Emmanuel' and 'Yea, Lord, we greet thee' on any day in December and feel thoroughly mixed up as we do. After all, we wouldn't sing 'Thine be the glory' during Passiontide. 

There isn't an easy way of resolving these tensions. But I try to suspend my own personal welcome to the Nativity until Christmas Eve itself, say to myself that until then, I'm singing carols 'proleptically', in the future tense so to speak, keeping the present until we finally arrive there. So when I get into the pulpit at the Nine Lessons and Carols on the afternoon of Christmas Eve and invite the huge crowd to 'go in heart and mind even unto Bethlehem to see this thing that has come to pass', it comes as a fresh revelation of a great and might wonder. I admit it - I am powerfully moved by the words of that bidding prayer. This 'surprise by joy' has never failed yet. 

And even after evensong on Christmas Day, when the choir has gone home and the Cathedral is quiet once more, the vaults and arcades still re-echo in mind and heart to the remembered tidings of comfort and joy we have celebrated in this past month, and to the glory that has come among us, never to depart. 

A Comet and a Painting: can Philae inspire us to face the apocalypse?

Regulars know that I take to blogging as a way of responding to what has stimulated my imagination. I can't complain of a lack of material this month.

1950 was a good year for Comets (the capital 'C' is meant). Late in 1949, the De Havilland prototype jet aircraft 'Comet' that some of us remember was rolled out to great acclaim. Tests began in earnest in 1950. Meanwhile in the altogether vaster arena of the Solar System, two key theories about comets were first proposed. One was the 'dirty snowball' concept about a comet's make-up; the other that comets originate in an obscure region beyond the planets in the Oorst Cloud that surrounds the Solar System. The next year, the theory that a comet's tail is caused by the solar wind acting upon it was also put forward. All three are now established as central to our understanding of what comets are and how they behave.

All this in the year I was born....

What's prompts this recollection is of course the news in the past hours that the Philae-Lander has settled on the surface of Comet 67P. While the status of the landing craft's security and functionality is not yet certain, everyone agrees that it is a momentous achievement on the part of the European Space Agency.

Two years ago, I blogged on the journeys of Voyager One and Two (it's still on this site: 28 October 2012, Now Voyager! Travelling the Solar System). These journeys to give us stupendous images of the Solar System's outer planets were already the stuff of dreams. But Philae's landing on her - and surely now our very own - comet makes Voyager seem like a sight-seeing trip. I tweeted that the bouncy landing, not at all wanted by the scientists, had something of a jump for joy about it. Maybe that echoes what many of us were feeling: the sheer exhilaration and gratitude that we are alive to see this day. I said that it would take a Thomas Hardy to do justice to the poetry of this event.

There's a metaphor here. 

I don't know whether Philae will help change the consciousness of the human race. We dared to hope as much of humanity's first steps on the Moon. We were right: extending horizons has always been a goal of human exploration not primarily as an act of colonisation or possession (whatever was intended at the time), rather enlarging the imagination and learning to see ourselves in new ways. 'Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp' said Robert Browning in Andrea del Sarto: whatever else he means, it must be to do with our potential to transcend and renew ourselves, take hold of a larger vision of life; 'or what's a heaven for?'

As a person of faith, I still want to say that events like today's still have the capacity to change minds and hearts. Science is God-given, even if God isn't always recognised in scientific endeavour. But I am a lot less sanguine than I was in those heady days of the Apollo 11 landing in July 1969. When I saw today's image of a leg of Philae perched under what seemed like a rocky cliff, I didn't grasp the distortion of perspective. Simply as a photograph, it reminded me at once of something very different: those vast apocalyptic canvasses painted by Northumberland artist John Martin of Haydon Bridge (whatever had that lovely little village done to him to beget a son of such morbidity? Maybe in our retirement we'll walk the John Martin trail through the woods and gorges of the South Tyne and Allen Valleys and find out). In his darkly grand vision, human beings, all our civilisation and achievement, is depicted as transient and insignificant compared to the mountains, rocks and cliffs that rear up on all sides only to fall on and crush hapless men, women and children. See for example The Great Day of His Wrath, the third painting of his famous Last Judgment triptych. (If you Google it you'll find his paintings online.)

Why, when I saw the Philae image today, did I associate to that painting without hesitation? I think because in my mind from a few hours earlier was yet another shocking report from Syria about the plight of millions of innocent people in despair at the cruelty of their fellow human beings. Philae delights us and excites nothing but admiration, yet still there terror on every side. It's the shadow that falls across us all, even in our best, our most ecstatic moments. We are perched precariously under a huge and ominous cliff.

But then I mused: if ESA can pull off such a feat on a far-distant comet through concerted international collaboration, surely the four deadly Horsemen of the Apocalypse could be tamed if there is the will to do it? It's a stupendous ask, but as Advent approaches with its bitter-sweet themes of Death, Judgment, Hell and Heaven, the world's peoples should galvanise one another to find the same intentional energy and collaborative focus to apply ourselves to constructing a better world. People of faith are already taking a lead. We may think that the Philae-Lander mocks our inability to make any lasting difference. But I believe it can also inspire us to act collectively to save our planet and its peoples. We must make sure it does. There isn't an alternative.

Isn't this what God calls us to as we gaze on a remote comet and marvel?